Impulsive Consumption Research Articles

Impact of environmental attitude and materialism on apparel disposal intention

Sustainability is an important rising trend in the apparel industry. Accordingly, this study focuses on the influence of environmental attitude, materialism, channel integration, and other factors on apparel disposal recycling intention in an omni-channel retailing environment. The main findings are as follows: materialism has a significant positive impact, channel integration quality has a significant negative impact, and environmental attitude has no significant impact on impulsive consumption. Next, environmental attitude, impulsive consumption, and channel integration exert significant positive effects on used apparel recycling intention. Finally, improving channel consistency could increase female consumers’ willingness to recycle used clothes more than that of male consumers.

The Impact of Impulsive Consumption on Supply Chain in the Live-Streaming Economy

Live e-commerce is an emerging business model in one form of which online influencers sell goods through live-streaming platforms. In this paper, we develop a live e-commerce supply chain pricing model with online influencers as retailers, with which we investigate the effects of consumers’ impulsive consumption behavior, satisfaction. This paper analyzes the impact of consumers’ impulse purchases on both manufacturers and retailers, and separately, on supply chains. We also assess consumers’ purchase decisions when they watch online influencers promoting products via live-streaming. The results reveal that the impact of impulse spending on supply chain agents is non-monotonic. Rational pricing decisions and ensuring high-value products are the keys to profitability and impulse spending that lead to consumer satisfaction and can increase competition in the market. Therefore, supply chain decision makers should increase customers’ satisfaction by offering products and enhancement following impulse consumption, rather than simply encouraging further impulse consumption behavior, which can often result in buyer’s remorse and returned merchandize.

The Relationship Between Product Diversity and Consumer Impulse Consumption: A Case Study Using Mobile Phone Products

The Relationship Between Product Diversity and Consumer Impulse Consumption: A Case Study Using Mobile Phone Products

Beauty of Energy-saving Makes You Impulsive! A Study on the Relationship between Product Aesthetics and Consumers’ Impulsive Purchase Intention

Appearance design greatly affects the influence of products on consumers, and product aesthetics plays an increasingly important role in consumers’ purchasing behavior. This article constructs a model of the influence of product aesthetics on consumers’ impulsive purchase intention, and puts forward corresponding hypotheses on this basis. Finally, the model and hypotheses are tested and revised through empirical methods. The data of this research shows that the aesthetic design level of products positively affects consumers’ impulsive purchase intentions, and positive emotions play an intermediary role between the two. At the same time, through analysis, this research confirms that consumers’ CVPA levels have an impact on products. Green stands for energy saving, and consumer behaviors that are conducive to reducing consumer spending and environmentally friendly can be favored. These can make consumers think of beautiful things, thereby enhancing impulsive consumption behavior. The relationship between aesthetics and consumers’ impulsive purchase intention has a moderating effect.

A Research Report on the Consumption View of Residents in Xinrong District under the Rural Revitalization Strategy

The “rural revitalization strategy” put forward in the report of the 19th national congress has pointed out the direction for the steady development of the rural economy. At present, the academic circle has done a lot of research on the five dimensions of the concrete implementation of the policy, but it has neglected the female consumption view under the influence of the policy. The female consumption view, which accounts for half of the rural population, has a great influence on the family and indirectly affects the implementation of the policy. Based on the strategy of the rejuvenating countryside as the background, from the gender Angle of view of Xinrong district women’s consumption situation investigation, using a structured questionnaire and on-the-spot investigation method, point out that rural women such as blind consumption, impulsive consumption alienation, in view of the problem put forward concrete opinions: to advocate green consumption mode, reshape the female subject values, the mass media guide, intended to help Xinrong district rural revitalization strategy, provide decision-making reference for the relevant department.

Buy or not: how the presence of others affects the occurrence of consumers' impulsive buying behavior

PurposeThe topic of impulsive buying has been studied by researchers for nearly 70 years and made a large number of valuable discoveries. However, most of the existing research studies focused on the impulse buying behavior in the context of single person shopping from the perspective of individuals and lack of research on impulse buying behavior in the context of shopping with others from the perspective of communities. Given that consumers' decision-making in the presence of others is significantly different from that when they are alone, it is necessary to probe into the internal mechanism of impulse purchase behavior in the context of shopping with others.Design/methodology/approachIn total three experiments were used to test the hypothesis. Study 1 examines the differences in the motivation of impulsive desire among consumers with different impulsive traits. A total of 240 undergraduates were recruited to participate in the study. The purpose of study 2 is to examine the effect of external attribution on consumer guilt, which leads to the failure of self-control. A total of 256 undergraduate students participated in the study 2. The purpose of study 3 was to test the moderating effect of the intensity of ties on the impact of goal on impulse purchase intention. A total of 240 subjects participated in study 3.FindingsWhen shopping with companions, consumers with different impulse traits have different initial impulses in the face of temptation, but they may have a similar higher willingness to buy on impulse. There are two reasons: on the one hand, consumers with high-impulsive traits produce a higher desire to buy on impulse driven by hedonistic motivation. In contrast, consumers with low-impulse traits will also have a higher impulse purchase desire driven by prosocial motivation. On the other hand, external attribution can lead to the failure of self-control and impulse purchase behavior. However, the above effects only occur when there is a strong connection between consumers.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, this paper simulates the phenomenon of impulse purchase in the relational situation through experimental methods; if the research based on the real consumption scenario can be carried out, the research results will be more convincing. Second, whether there are other intermediary mechanisms, such as whether external attribution can affect consumers' self-control through perceived social support, need to be further tested. Finally, it is also necessary to examine the role of other regulatory variables, such as consumers' sense of power, the type of self-construct, etc., and these research clues will further enrich the research on impulsive buying in the context of relationship.Practical implicationsFirst, businesses can launch more accurate marketing strategies for consumers who are shopping together, find ways to reduce consumers' attention to their own responsibility or fault and guide them to conduct external attribution to their impulsive consumption behavior. The findings also have implications for consumers to control their own impulse purchase behavior. In addition, the results of this study can provide new insights into the government to prevent social crisis and carry out consumer education.Originality/valueThe key contribution of the current research is that, unlike existing studies that focus on the exploration of impulsive buying in the context of single person shopping, this study explores the internal mechanism and causal process on how consumers' impulsive buying behavior occurs when shopping with others. The authors further make a contribution to a self-control theory by demonstrating that external attribution has a negative effect on self-control in relational situations. Finally, this study also finds that the intensity of ties can moderate the impacts of focus goals on impulsive buying behavior.

Click to Buy: The Impact of Retail Credit on Over-Consumption in the Online Environment

There is growing concern that worldwide cultures of consumption have had detrimental consequences for individual wellbeing and sustainability of the environment. The term “overconsumption” exemplifies the tension between mutually beneficial producer–consumer exchange and the damaging effects of excess. In search of a pathway toward reducing overconsumption practise, sustainability literature is often interested in better understanding not only why overconsumption occurs, but what facilitates it in particular consumer markets. Young adults are one group of consumers where transitioning identities and lifestyles see impulsive consumption of goods that are often termed “non-essential”, such as fashion and apparel products. This study explores the impact of a set of impulse enabling financial tools (buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) credit schemes) on impulse buying tendency in an online fashion shopping context, for young adult female consumers. The paper contributes a consumer perspective on the impact of BNPL on unsustainable consumption behaviour in the online retail setting, which the literature currently lacks, by considering consumers’ impulse buying tendencies in such a setting. Findings demonstrate that BNPL users have a higher online impulse buying tendency than those who do not use BNPL, and a clear link is identified between online impulse buying tendency and sales conversion tool sensitivity, thus promoting overconsumption in this setting.

Impulsive Consumption and Financial Well-Being: Evidence from an Increase in the Availability of Alcohol

Abstract The increased availability of alcohol may harm individuals who have present-focused preferences and consume more than initially planned. Using a nationwide experiment in Sweden, we study the credit behavior of low-income households around the expansion of liquor stores’ operating hours on Saturdays. Consistent with store closures serving as commitment devices, the policy led to higher credit demand, more default, increased dependence on welfare, and higher crime on Saturdays. The effects are concentrated on the young population due to higher alcohol consumption combined with tight liquidity constraints. The policy’s impact on indebtedness is estimated at 4.5 times the expenditure on alcohol.

On College Students' impulsive consumption psychology——the influence of trait power and money priming

Two experiments were conducted to explore the effects of trait power and money priming on College Students' impulse buying. In both experiments, Sense of Power Scale (SPS) was used to select subjects with high and low trait power to participate in the experiment; in Experiment 1, scrambled-words task was used to activate the concept of money; in Experiment 2, the method of mindset priming was used to activate the amount of money. The results show that: (1) After the concept of money is activated, individuals with low trait power have higher impulse purchase intention than those with high trait power, regardless of whether they are rich or poor; however, there is no significant difference between high and low power groups in no money concept priming group. (2) No matter whether the level of individual's trait power is high or low, compared with the condition of lack of money, individuals have higher impulse purchase intention under the condition of money abundance.

Participation in Fast Fashion Brands’ Clothes Recycling Plans in an Omnichannel Retail Environment

The rise of the fast fashion industry allows more and more people to participate in fashion consumption, but goes along with negative consequences on the environment. To reduce wastage, fast fashion retailers have begun to offer used clothes recycling plans to which customers can submit clothes they no longer wear. Since these recycling plans have mainly been operated in offline stores so far, the rise of omnichannel retailing poses new challenges on retailers with regard to organizing the plan and motivating consumers to participate. On a sample of N=370 Chinese fast fashion consumers, this paper investigates, which factors determine consumers’ willingness to participate in fast fashion brands’ used clothes recycling plans in an omnichannel retailing environment. It finds that consumers’ clothes recycling intention is determined by individual predispositions (environmental attitude, impulsive consumption), as well as by organizational arrangements (channel integration quality), as well as by the outcomes of their interaction (consumer satisfaction, brand identification). Conclusions are drawn, implications for omnichannel fast fashion retailing practice, as well as for further research, derived, and limitations discussed.

Do Status discrepancy and socioeconomic immobility really drive compensatory consumption?

This research aimed to empirically explore whether impulsive consumption in the hospitality industry could be explained as a form of compensatory behavior that individuals engage in to cope with pessimistic self-evaluations. In this study, these self-evaluations have been operationalized as status discrepancy and perceived socioeconomic immobility. To test the hypotheses, this study used a three-way factorial design in two consumption settings: (1) leisure activities and (2) restaurant visits. Across the two studies, the results indicated that satisfactory self-assessments, rather than status discrepancy or socioeconomic immobility, lead to impulsive consumption. Despite the reversed findings, this study verified that participants jointly reflect status discrepancy and socioeconomic immobility in consumption contexts. Moreover, the findings suggest that millennials are more sensitive towards mobility information than older generations. This study sheds light on generational differences in impulsive consumption in the hospitality industry.

How Does a Public Health Emergency Motivate People's Impulsive Consumption? An Empirical Study during the COVID-19 Outbreak in China.

Impulsive consumption is a typical behavior that people often present during public health emergencies, which usually leads to negative outcomes. This study investigates how public health emergencies, such as COVID-19, affect people’s impulsive consumption behavior. Data from 1548 individuals in China during the COVID-19 outbreak was collected. The sample covered 297 prefecture-level cities in 31 provincial administrative regions. The research method included the use of a structural equation model to test multiple research hypotheses. The study finds that the severity of a pandemic positively affects people’s impulsive consumption. Specifically, the more severe the pandemic, the more likely people are to make impulsive consumption choices. The results indicate that both perceived control and materialism play mediating roles between the severity of a pandemic and impulsive consumption. As conclusions, people’s impulsive consumption during public health emergencies can be weakened either by enhancing their perceived control or by reducing their materialistic tendency. These conclusions are valuable and useful for a government’s crisis response and disaster risk management.

Tmall Recycling Logistics Solution Research

In the online shopping process, because users only rely on pictures and text description to make the purchase decision, it is easy to have impulsive consumption or purchase goods that are not suitable for them. In the process of online shopping logistics, due to improper packaging and handling, it will cause damage to the goods. In addition, the inevitable product production process, the improvement of consumers’ awareness of rights protection and other factors all contribute to the reverse logistics of tmall mall shopping. This paper analyzes the advantages of reverse logistics, the general process of recycling logistics, the present situation and existing problems of Tmall return logistics, and the optimization scheme of reverse logistics based on the joint recovery mode is proposed. Finally, the feasibility of the scheme is analyzed.

Impact of Materialistic Values on Impulsive and Compulsive Consumption via Status Consumption: A Research on Young Consumers

The impulsive and compulsive consumption that consumers cannot control has become a threat to individuals and countries due to their negative economic and social consequences. Materialism and status consumption are important negative personality traits underlying various consumers' behaviors. In this research, it is aimed to explore the impact of materialistic values and status consumption on impulsive and compulsive consumption. Cluster sampling method was chosen as sampling method. Students aged 17 to 24 year-olds were selected and 589 usable completed questionnaires were received by using self-completion survey method. According to the results of the model, materialistic values has significant and positive direct impact on status, impulsive and compulsive consumption respectively. In research model, since impact of status consumption on compulsive consumption is not significant, materialistic values have impact on compulsive consumption via status and impulsive consumption.

Explaining shopping behavior in a market economy country: A short‐term mathematical model applied to the case of Spain

AbstractIn recent decades, pathological consumption has become a growing behavioral misbehavior. Impulsive consumption is governed by two internal behavioral mechanisms that respond fundamentally to the hedonism or Pascal effect and to the emulation or Veblen effect. Today's development of technology acts as a catalyst of consumption by increasing access and availability to products, as well as the advertisement impact. This paper presents a compartmental discrete matrix mathematical model that allows short‐term estimates of ordinary, impulsive, and pathological buyers in Spain in three different economic scenarios. The results show that impulsive and pathological buyers will increase in all the economic scenarios. Notable differences in the number of ordinary buyers are found for the group aged over 65 years.

The Influence of Financial Quantitative Literacy and Subjective Numeracy on Impulsive Consumption with Materialism as the Mediator Variable

The Influence of Financial Quantitative Literacy and Subjective Numeracy on Impulsive Consumption with Materialism as the Mediator Variable

Social Support, Source Credibility, Social Influence, and Impulsive Purchase Behavior in Social Commerce

ABSTRACTSocial commerce (s-commerce)—the use of social media to support electronic commerce—has become pervasive. This paper aims to investigate an important type of consumer behaviour that could generate considerable economic value: impulsive purchase behaviour. Specifically, we focus on the role of peer influence. Social influence theory posits that the process via which peers change a consumer’s behaviour can be interpreted along two dimensions: informational and normative. Furthermore, drawing from literature, source credibility and social support are proposed as the antecedent factors of the influencing processes in this context. We surveyed 303 s-commerce participants in Sina Weibo to empirically test the research model. The results indicate that peers’ expertise and trustworthiness are significantly related to both types of social influence that could exert an influence on a consumer. Further, consumers’ exchange of informational and emotional social support significantly facilitates social influence among them. This study contributes to both the s-commerce and the impulsive purchase literature by revealing the role of peer influence in consumers’ impulsive consumption behaviour in the s-commerce setting. The practical implications are also illustrated in the paper.

The development of executive function in early childhood is inversely related to change in body mass index: Evidence for an energetic tradeoff?

A well-established literature demonstrates executive function (EF) deficits in obese children and adults relative to healthy weight comparisons. EF deficits in obesity are associated with overeating and impulsive consumption of high calorie foods leading to excess weight gain and to problems with metabolic regulation and low-grade inflammation that detrimentally affect the structure and function of prefrontal cortex. Here, we test a complementary explanation for the relation between EF and body mass index (BMI) grounded in the energy demand of the developing brain. Recent work shows that the brain accounts for a lifetime peak of 66% of resting metabolic rate in childhood and that developmental changes in brain energetics and normative changes in body weight gain are closely inversely related. This finding suggests a trade-off in early childhood between energy used to support brain development versus energy used to support physical growth and fat deposition. To test this theorized energetic trade-off, we analyzed data from a large longitudinal sample (N=1,292) and found that change in EF from age 3 to 5years, as a proxy for brain development in energetically costly prefrontal cortex, is inversely related to change in BMI from age 2 to 5years. Greater linear decline in BMI predicted greater linear increase in EF. We interpret this finding as tentative support for a brain-body energetic trade-off in early childhood with implications for lifetime obesity risk.

SPENDING WELL: HOW TIME PERSPECTIVES IMPACT CONSUMER VALUES AND FINANCIAL DECISIONS AMONG MIDDLE-AGED ADULTS

The current research extends the time perspective literature by exploring the relationships between time perspectives and financial outcomes across several adult age groups. In combining various demographically diverse samples, our study includes a total of 9,065 adults that completed some form of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI). We found that people who are Future-oriented tend to have more responsible financial lifestyles. On the other hand, Past-Negative, Present-Hedonism, and Past-Fatalism orientations are associated with more detrimental financial lifestyles. Thus, the greater the deviation from a balanced time perspective middle-aged adults were, the (1) more they reported being materialistic, (2) more impulsive, compulsive, and conspicuous they were when shopping, and (3) less financially secure they felt. Also, our mediation models revealed that increased impulsive buying, compulsive buying, and conspicuous consumption partially mediated the negative relation between Past-Negative and financial security. However, decreased conspicuous consumption partially mediated the positive relation between Future and financial risk tolerance. We discuss potential ways to shape individual time perspectives, the developmental implications for time perspectives, consumer profiles, and well-being, as well as limitations.

Measures of Implicit Cognition for Marketing Research

Academics and managers need to know that key mental processes occur below the conscious awareness threshold. While unconscious processes largely influence consumer decision-making processes, self-report measures do not reveal these processes adequately. Consequently, marketers need to utilise psychologists’ indirect measures that infer unconscious mental content from reaction-time tasks. Three well-known tools are explicated in the present article: the Emotional Stroop Task, the Implicit Association Test (IAT), and the Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT). Each test taps into a different facet of implicit cognition. This research describes these test instruments’ experimental setups and alternative procedures to guide academics and practitioners when they apply implicit measures. The Ask Your Brain (AYB) survey software is presented as an online research platform for executing all three test types and provides a cost-efficient alternative to lab experiments. In this paper’s conceptual part, we outline the three test instruments’ research paradigms and describe their past applications in the marketing domain. We describe each implicit measurement instrument’s conceptual background, summarize its standard test procedures, and briefly discuss relevant methodological criticisms. We describe how the obtained measurement data should be prepared, condensed, and analysed. Subsequently, we present an empirical case to illustrate the concrete application of the different measurement instruments, utilising empirical data gained from a consumer protection study of 104 South African students. These young adults were confronted with alcohol stimuli in the Emotional Stroop Task, IAT, and AAT. They subsequently performed a discrete choice task related to alcoholic drinks and soft drinks. Based on their drink choices, we explore the extent to which the implicit measures relate to their choice behaviour. The Emotional Stroop Task is based on the premise that emotional stimuli attract more visual attention than neutral stimuli. This distraction causes a delay in response when participants are asked to name a displayed word's colour as fast as possible. Although our study could not directly support this premise, alcohol-inclined participants generally reacted more slowly to alcohol and neutral stimuli. The IAT confronts participants with combinations of a bipolar target category and a bipolar attribute category. Category combinations corresponding to the respondent's intuition (compatible) facilitate task performance and result in shorter reaction times. In our study, those individuals who chose significantly more drinks containing alcohol reacted faster to combinations of “alcohol” and “active” (rather than “alcohol” and “miserable”). This finding shows that the IAT can indeed predict choice behaviour. Finally, the AAT postulates that individuals move faster to a desired object and away from an undesired object. Both the reaction times and the error rates indicated this pattern. Individuals were slower and produced more errors during incongruent tasks (push positive items; pull negative items) than congruent tasks (pull liked items, push disliked items). This finding show that implicit measures can identify consumers´ approach and avoidance tendencies. This paper provides methodological insights into three prominent implicit cognition measures, as well as practical suggestions for practitioners and academics. We exemplify each method’s usage for research questions in marketing and consumer research. We particularly suggest using the Emotional Stroop Task for studies on attention-based processes, for example, advertisement exposure. The IAT is recommended for assessing richer cognitive processes, such as product or brand images, and the AAT when studying visceral and biological influences on impulsive consumption. Overall, we encourage marketing researchers to add implicit measures to their toolbox and to explore their contributions further for a better understanding of consumer decision making.